COLOMBO: Hundreds of civilians were killed when the Sri Lankan Army launched a concerted assault on an area it had just designated as a safe zone, a doctor working inside the so-called no-fire zone in the north of the country said yesterday. He claimed at least 378 people were killed and 1,212 injured in a series of attacks on Saturday night, which included shelling from positions held by government forces.
If true, that would make it the bloodiest day since the government launched its campaign to destroy the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the start of the year. The death toll is likely to rise because the figure from the medical staff only includes bodies brought to the hospital, the doctor said.
The assault started on the same day that the Sri Lankan government ordered the tens of thousands of civilians still trapped by the fighting to move into an area just 2 km long and less than 1.6 km wide to enable it to flush out the remaining rebels. The shrinking of the “safe zone” meant some families had to abandon bunkers they had dug in the sand.
According to a UN source, most of the people who were killed were inside the new “no-fire zone”. The official said many were believed to have died in an airstrike at about 5.30 a.m. yesterday.
Medical staff working in makeshift facilities inside the zone said the shelling began Saturday evening. One doctor said the shelling continued until 9 a.m. yesterday. It appeared that the shells were fired from government positions in Mullaittivu, he said.
He said the dead included a man who worked as a nurse at the hospital and seven members of his family, who were killed when a shell hit the bunker where they were sheltering. “The shells were landing about 300 meters from the hospital,” he said. “All the time, we have casualties coming in. We don’t have time to think.”
He said the dead were being buried in large pits each holding 30 or 40 bodies.
He ended the telephone interview without giving his name, saying he had to deal with an eight-year-old boy who had just been brought in and required immediate surgery on his wounds.
Another doctor, V. Shanmugarajah, said that 1,122 people had been wounded in the artillery barrage. “We are doing the first aid and some surgeries as quickly as we can. We are doing what is possible. The situation is overwhelming; nothing is within our control,” he said. The pro-LTTE TamilNet website claimed about 2,000 people had died, while the government denied having anything to do with the shelling. The claims cannot be verified.
The difficulties in reporting the situation in the north of the country were highlighted yesterday by the deportation of three members of a news team from British broadcaster Channel 4 arrested in Trincomalee, south of the no-fire zone, on Saturday. The government accused them of fabricating a report that women were subjected to sexual abuse in the internment camps set up to hold civilians fleeing the fighting.
